The next cell on the right (32) has the Sermon on the Mount and the
Temptation in the Wilderness. In the following (33), also double,
besides the frescoed Kiss of Judas, are two minute pictures by Fra
Angelico, belonging to an earlier stage of his art than the frescoes,
intended for reliquaries and formerly in Santa Maria Novella. One of
them, the _Madonna della Stella_, is a very perfect and typical
example of the Friar's smaller works, in their "purity of colour
almost shadowless." The other, the Coronation of the Madonna, is less
excellent and has suffered from retouching. The Agony in the Garden
(in cell 34) contains a curious piece of mediæval symbolism in the
presence of Mary and Martha, contemplation and action, the Mary being
here the Blessed Virgin. In the same cell is another of the
reliquaries from Santa Maria Novella, the Annunciation over the
Adoration of the Magi, with Madonna and Child, the Virgin Martyrs, the
Magdalene and St. Catherine of Siena below; the drawing is rather
faulty. In the following cells are the Last Supper (35), conceived
mystically as the institution of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar,
with the Madonna alone as witness; the Deposition from the Cross (36);
and the Crucifixion (37), in which Dominic stands with out-stretched
arms.
Opposite on the right (38-39) is the great cell where Pope Eugenius
stayed on the occasion of the consecration of San Marco in 1442; here
Cosimo the Elder, Pater Patriae, spent long hours of his closing days,
in spiritual intercourse with St. Antoninus and after the latter's
death. In the outer compartment the Medicean saint, Cosmas, joins
Madonna and Peter Martyr at the foot of the Cross. Within are the
Adoration of the Magi and a Pietà, both from Angelico's hand, and the
former, one of his latest masterpieces, probably painted with
reference to the fact that the convent had been consecrated on the
Feast of the Epiphany. Here, too, is an old terracotta bust of
Antoninus, and a splendid but damaged picture of Cosimo himself by
Jacopo da Pontormo, incomparably finer than that artist's similarly
constructed work in the Uffizi. Between two smaller cells containing
Crucifixions, both apparently by Angelico himself (42-43--the former
with the Mary and Martha motive at the foot of the Cross), is the
great Greek Library, built by Michelozzo for Cosimo. Here Cosimo
deposited a portion of the manuscripts which had been collected by
Niccolò Niccoli, with additions of his own, and it became the first
public library in Italy. Its shelves are now empty and bare, but it
contains a fine collection of illuminated ritual books from suppressed
convents, several of which are, rather doubtfully, ascribed to
Angelico's brother, Fra Benedetto da Mugello.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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